Summer Time Blues: It’s mid-summer and we’ve got the summer time blues. Tell us how you’re feeling at this mid-summer check in point. Do you have the summer time blues? How do you snap out of it? Or if you’re still loving summer, what’s been going great?

I am frustrated. And so I am sharp with myself. With my husband. With my family. With my friends.

I was speaking with someone recently, and we were sharing stories of agony. They said, I know that this cannot compare to what you’ve just experienced. I cut them off and said Pain is not a competition. We are not in a race to see who has The Worst Pain or Who Can Hurt More. It can just be…bad. So we left it at that.

I look at all of this. The stress. The exhaustion. The tears. The things left undone. The relationships left on life support. And I am not proud because I feel like I am failing at all of it on a grand scale.

This is an uncomfortable space for me to inhabit. Un-pride. Failure. Defeat. Exhaustion. I like to think that it is in my nature to be resilient. To bounce back up. To find my way back to the water’s surface. But right now that feels really hard.

All of it made more bittersweet because the hope of these 80 degree days was meant to be a balm against an especially long, especially cold winter. The sun is shining and all I want is a moment to breathe.

But I am surrounded by unconditional love. By my husband. By my family. By my friends. It’s a talisman of sorts.

Out for dinner last week, I looked at a friend and told her, I come with a warning label tonight. I’m feeling very pointy. And she told me that she did not care about my pointy-ness at all.

Even on the days where I am exhausted by my own antics, the days where I am all edges, they lean in and press harder. They remind me that I have worth. That I am precious. That it is going to be okay. That there is a place where all of it stops and we get to start fresh once more. Where I am pushing away, they are coming closer.